Memories Matter
Featured blog Posts
READ THE LATEST POSTS
Life Story Links: November 2, 2021
This biweekly curated reading list includes insights into recent celeb memoirs plus helpful tools & resources for anyone who wants to preserve their stories.
“No harm is done to history by making it something someone would want to read.”
—David McCullough
Vintage news photo of woman suffrage headquarters on Upper Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, circa 1912, with editor’s marking of “A,” “B,” and “C” as a guide for identifying key figures: A, Miss Belle Sherwin, president, National League of Women Voters; B, Judge Florence E. Allen (holding the flag); and C, Mrs. Malcolm McBride. Photographed by Harris & Ewing and International (New York), courtesy Library of Congress.
The Weight of Our Words
NARRATIVES OF TRAUMA
“Hearing survivors’ stories is absolutely healing for other survivors,” Amita Swadhin, founder of a nonprofit dedicated to sharing the stories of LGBTQIA+ Black, indigenous people, and people of color who have survived child sexual abuse.
HISTORY IS NOT FIXED
There is no definitive history, and we as oral historians and storytellers have a responsibility to preserve the truth amidst biases and shifting perspectives, opines family archivist Amanda Lacson.
REAL FAMILY STORIES, FICTIONALIZED
When famed novelist John Updike wrote a short story about her father—using many aspects lifted directly from real life alongside one that was decidedly not—poet Molly Fisk was forced to confront the secret truths that lie in fiction.
Preserving Family Legacies
FOOD AND FAMILY
Get the whole family involved in saving stories and favorite holiday recipes with these three easy and fun Thanksgiving memory-keeping ideas.
FOR THE DESCENDANTS
"Every personal history has its own unique set of circumstances that make it valuable even if it's just to your family," historian Dustin Galer said.
REVISITING ARTIFACTS
“The visceral experience of touching those photos and memorabilia made my personal history so tangible.” When a writer begins cleaning through all the stuff in her basement, “buried treasures emerge.”
Holocaust Testimony & War History
PASSING FROM LIVING MEMORY
“There are so few people alive who are actually part of this,” Daniel Mendelsohn said. “[The Holocaust] is in danger of becoming abstracted. It’s in danger of losing the fine-grained human reality, the little things people remember, and that, to me, is very anguishing.”
“THERE IS NO OPPOSING VIEW”
“I have nothing to say to the principal from Texas who thinks we need to have books with opposing views of the Holocaust,” Ilana Wiles writes in this thoughtful piece. “I hope that being vocal and telling our story, instead of keeping it hidden or shrouded in secrecy, will help our family continue to heal.”
PERSONAL STORIES REVEAL WWII HISTORY
The Imperial War Museum in London has unveiled new exhibitions entirely dedicated to the Second World War, including personal stories from 100 individuals from more than 30 countries:
Public Personalities, Private Stories
“ALL ABOUT MY SISTERS”
“Over a period of seven years, Wang [Qiong] filmed her parents, siblings and relatives from within the emotional thicket of their lives, capturing moments of piercing, private intimacy.” Filmmaker traces the tragic effects of China’s one-child policy on her family.
MYSTERY SOLVED
“Our archives contain multitudes. They open us to a world that helped to frame our own lives, though it can often feel inaccessibly distant. It’s always there, just waiting to be found, and to give up its closely-held secrets to those willing to look.” On recovering the history of actor David Duchovny’s grandfather, a Yiddish writer.
BUSTING INTO THE BOYS’ CLUB
Katie Couric’s new memoir, Going There, “might as well be subtitled ‘Owning This,’ starting with rattlesome family skeletons: subdued Judaism on one side, ‘blighted with racists’ on the other,” writes a reviewer.
RECONSIDERING THE MAN
“There’s a paradoxical pain built into reading a biography of someone we thought we knew well: In getting to know him better, he somehow morphs into a stranger.” How two new additions to the Anthony Bourdain canon contribute to his legacy.
“BERNSTEIN’S WALL”
“In a series of archival interviews that anchor the 105-minute film and provide its narration, [Leonard] Bernstein—who died in 1990 at age 72—muses on the role of the artist in society and the power of music to transform hearts and minds.”
...and a Few More Links
Memoirist Joyce Maynard announces winners of her 2021 personal narrative essay contest.
Penn Libraries acquires the personal papers of historian and activist Elizabeth Fee.
This four-week course in November is geared to help you write your memoir.
“I would have to revise the final manuscript of my life.”
Short Takes
Life Story Links: May 25, 2021
A curated reading list for memory-keepers, memoirists, family historians & storytellers for the week of May 24, 2021, including inspiring first-person writing.
“The only thing that counts in your journal is your passion and the freedom to write what is in your heart. This is your life, your portrait, and the person you are choosing to become all rolled up into one. Be juicy.”
—Terry Tempest Williams
Vintage postcard, circa 1915, depicting the Brooklyn Bridge and New York skyline, courtesy of the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
Preserving Our History
RECORDING RESOURCES
“Our elders have rich stories to share. There’s no better time than now to sit down and hit Record.” Wired magazine turns its attention to using technology to capture family history.
THROUGH A NEW LENS
Having conducted 250 interviews over a decade, Luke Holland’s documentary Final Account aims to preserve the memories of Germans who lived through the Holocaust. “The USC Shoah Foundation will incorporate these ‘perpetrator testimonies’ into its program for high-school students, preserving the recollections of this last surviving generation for posterity.”
Pictures & Stories
DIGITAL PHOTO MEMORIES
When Google Photos’ free storage ends on June 1, should you upgrade to a paid plan? The Wall Street Journal reports on cloud photo-backup options for ensuring that your family photo archive is preserved.
DON’T DO THIS
There’s one big mistake people make when resizing their digital photos for print, and I am on a mission to help you all avoid it.
BATTLE OF THE SUBWAY MAPS
When is a single conversation worthy of being recounted in a book? In this case, when the resulting decisions impacted both how NYC residents got around for decades and how designers approached real-world challenges.
The Stuff of Life
“THE THINGY-NESS OF THINGS”
“The odd object essay cannot hinge on ‘this tchotchke reminds me of my mother,’” Kren Babine writes. “Memory is faulty, subject to a thousand factors, and evidence—an object which shows that something exists or is true—holds no inherent value, because it is always subject to interpretation.”
HOUSE AS HOME
“As memoir writers we must ultimately wrestle with our beliefs about home.” Beth Kephart suggests a handful of starting places for writing the places that raised us.
FAVORITE THINGS
“Our thumbprints are all over the items we have collected and saved over the years.” Kate Manahan, an oral historian in Maine, finds that “for some people, talking about the things they love is just way easier than telling a ‘story.’”
MITIGATING OUR LOSSES
When disaster strikes, the loss of family treasures can be an unfortunate and devastating consequence. Archivist Rachael Woody offers help for channeling your emotional response into action, and preparing those treasures for the worst (checklist included).
Recent First-Person Reads Worth Your Time
VISITING (DEAD) ANCESTORS IN PRAGUE
“While couples embrace, while college students drink pivo, Czech beer, while parents push strollers, their kids licking zmrzlina, ice cream dribbling down chins from August heat, I curve inward with the weight of inherited memory.” Claire Sicherman connects her 13-year-old son with his roots.
LEARNING TO FIGHT
“Did I need to train like a superhero just to be a person in America? Maybe,” Alexander Chee, author of the essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, writes. “But if I thought of superheroes, it was because my father was like one to me, training me to be like him.”
DEPOSITS IN THE BANK OF MEMORY
“Something came into my head, and it was this: I must remember this moment for the rest of my life. It was a random resolution that arrived with the force of an epiphany.” Stephen Harrigan writes about his lifelong need for dropping memory anchors.
OUTSIDE, INSIDE
“The first time I dressed in men’s clothes, I looked in the mirror and cried. I pressed myself against the reflection. I wanted to press myself to the other side.” SJ Sindu writes “A Measure of Men.”
GOD AND GHOSTS
“My brother granted it was probably for the best that I didn’t attend the funeral. I was still in middle-school at the time and didn’t exactly have the neural wherewithal to process that sort of thing.” Barrett Swanson on the ones we leave behind.
...and a Few More Links
Registration is open for HippoCamp: A Conference for Creative Nonfiction Writers.
Book review: The Best of Brevity, an anthology celebrating the online journal’s 20 years of publishing flash creative nonfiction
New celebrity memoirs of interest: Rememberings by Sinead O’Connor and Brat by Andrew McCarthy
Short Takes
Life Story Links: October 27, 2020
An array of reads for memory keepers, life story writers, and family history preservationists including celebrity memoirs, photo stories & adoption narratives.
“Here’s the deal. The human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed—to be seen, heard, and companioned exactly as it is.”
—Parker J. Palmer
Vintage “Jolly Hallowe’en” postcard, courtesy The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collection.
Beyond Celebrity
YOU MATTER TO ME
“Unexpected praise, like a gift given ‘just because,’ can be even more powerful—and make an even bigger impact…So do it now. Before it's too late.” How Eddie Van Halen’s death inspired this decree for telling those who matter to you that they are appreciated. Tribute time, anyone?
“EARLY LIFE ISN’T EVERYTHING”
The brother of comedian Mike Nichols writes a heartfelt letter offering a counterpoint to the way a reviewer characterized his mother, “dismissed with the single word ‘nightmarish,’ and I will attempt in this letter to relate some information that might allow a fuller and kinder understanding of her.”
AND IT’S NOT GHOSTWRITTEN
“I had been threatening, daring myself to go open my treasure chest of diaries for the past 15 years but never had the courage to do it,” actor Matthew McConaughey says. The milestone of turning 50 was the impetus he needed, and the resulting book—“a love letter to life,” he calls it—is out now.
Saving Our Photo Stories
TOO MANY PICTURES?
“It’s a lot of ‘I’ll do it later.’ And really, you could do years’ worth of later. And then you’re kind of faced with this insurmountable project before you.” Why you shouldn’t put off that big digital photo organizing project.
PHOTOS & STORYTELLING
I’m a personal historian, so it should come as no surprise that I think a photo book with no stories is, as my grandmother would say, for the birds. I offer up three themes that elevate your photo book to heirloom, and make adding your personal stories easy.
All History Is Personal
RACE, IDENTITY & THE STORIES WE TELL
“If we truly want Mississippi to advance, we have to embrace all of its stories, even the ones that make us uncomfortable.” University professor W. Ralph Eubanks discusses why he teaches Southern identity and memory, and how “memory is not a passive repository of facts, but an active process of creating meaning about the past.”
HOW THEY VOTED
Have you created an archive of your family's voting history? Pam Pacelli Cooper of Massachusetts–based Verissima Productions.offers some questions to consider as we celebrate National Archives month and head into the November elections.
WHERE IS THE BLACK BRITISH HISTORY?
“I’m privileged in that my Grandma took it upon herself to commit her life story to the page, which means our entire extended family can learn about our shared personal history by reading her book. Most Black Brits aren’t nearly as lucky,” Almaz Ohene writes—and so she shares her story so they may, too, see themselves and “and the collective importance of their histories.”
Life Story Work
FOR THE ADOPTIVE FAMILY
“Life story work is vitally important and is about giving adopted children a narrative that they can understand about their early life experiences.” All families who adopt through this UK–based agency are offered one-to-one sessions with a life story support worker.
IN THE GRIP OF MOURNING
Can you write someone’s life story if they are still deep in the throes of mourning? Should you? Seattle–based memoirist and ghostwriter Bruno George ponders these questions, and turns to Roland Barthes’s Mourning Diary for added insight.
In First Person
IN CONVERSATION
Alisson Wood on “the myth of catharsis in memoir, redistributing power, and the tales we tell ourselves in order to both justify and survive the situations we find ourselves in. And how, by retelling these stories, we reclaim our own power.”
“1,000 ARABIAN NIGHTS”
When Umber Ahmad brought friends to her childhood home in Michigan, she dreamed there would be Little Debbie cakes in their perfect plastic wrappers. Her mom had other plans, as she shares in this story on the latest episode of the Schmaltzy Podcast
...and a Few More Links
a selection of items from the historic Waldorf Astoria Hotel auction
Did you know that the RootsTech 2021 all-virtual conference is free?
FISHstory uses historic photos which illustrate the past to benefit future science.
Short Takes